Architecture, for instance, and music, are alike based
upon instinctive preferences in human beings, the one for
geometrical form, the other for the combination of vibrations. It
is a law of music, for instance, that the human being prefers an
octave in absolute unison, and not an octave of which one note is a
semitone flat. That is not a rule invented by critics; it is a law
of human perception and preference. Similarly there is undoubtedly
a law which determines human preferences in poetry, though a far
more complicated law, and not yet analysed. The new poet is not a
man who breaks the law, but one who discovers a real extension of
it.
The question then, roughly, is this: Whitman chose to express
himself in a species of poetry, based roughly upon Hebrew poetry,
such as we have in the Psalms and Prophets. If this is a true
expansion of the aesthetic law of poetry, then it is a success; if
it is not a true expansion, but only a wilful variation, not
consonant with the law, it is a failure.
Now there are many effects in Whitman which are, I believe,
inconsistent with the poetical law. Not to multiply instances, his
grotesque word-inventions--"Me imperturbe!" "No dainty dolce
affettuoso I," "the drape of the day"--his use of Greek and Latin
and French terms, not correctly used and not even rightly spelt,
his endless iterations, lists, catalogues, categories, things not
clearly visualised or even remotely perceived, but swept
relentlessly in, like the debris of some store-room, all these are
ugly mannerisms which simply blur and encumber the pages.
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